NetApp clambers over stumbling Big Blue as storage market shrinks

In the first quarter of 2013, the network-attached storage and storage-area-network markets shrank for the first time in four years, according to IDC. HP, Hitachi and IBM revenues were the hardest hit hard, we're told.

The bean-counters' Quarterly Storage Tracker monitors suppliers' sales of external (networked) storage and total storage hardware (external plus server-attached), and computes their percentage revenue share. By tracking it we can see how well the vendors are doing relative to each other and to the market, and what is happening to the overall sector.

In the first three months of this year, the external storage market was worth a shade over $5.91bn according to IDC, a fall of 0.9 percent compared to the year-ago total of $5.97bn.

IDC attributed this decline to reduced demand in developed markets. The total storage market was worth $7.7bn, a 3.2 per cent fall from the year-ago quarter, probably affected by lower server sales.

Within these numbers the NAS and non-mainframe SAN sector actually grew 0.4 per cent to a tad more than $5.1bn. The open SAN market also grew 1.3 per cent over this period while the NAS market declined 2.2 per cent. In that sector NetApp led with 37.4 per cent while EMC was second with a 36.9 per cent share*.

Supplier revenue shares for external storage in the first quarter of 2013 were:

Company name

Revenue share (2013)

Revenue share (2012)

EMC

30.4 per cent

29.0 per cent

IBM

10.9 per cent

11.4 per cent

NetApp

14.9 per cent

14.1 per cent

HP

8.5 per cent

10.2 per cent

Hitachi

8.9 per cent

9.4 per cent

Others

26.5 per cent

25.9 per cent

EMC is top of the chart and an overall riser. The graph below shows that trend and we can also see that NetApp's overtaking of IBM has happened before with NetApp unable to sustain its advantage as Big Blue clawed back its sales share in the subsequent quarters. Perhaps this time it will be different.

IDC external storage sales share for Q1 2013 … click on the chart to get a larger version

The trend lines for HP and IBM are, overall, declining while Hitachi's trend is flat. Dell does not appear in the chart because IDC includes it in the "Others" category, its external storage revenues being that small. These are percentage revenue share numbers so, as long as the overall market is growing, so are their revenues.

IDC's equivalent numbers for total storage revenues are:

Company name

Revenue share (2013)

Revenue share (2012)

EMC

23.2 per cent

21.7 per cent

HP

15.5 per cent

18.2 per cent

Dell

13.9 per cent

11.5 per cent

IBM

12.1 per cent

14.9 per cent

NetApp

11.4 per cent

10.5 per cent

Others

23.9 per cent

23.2 per cent

Another chart shows the trends over the past few quarters:-

IDC's total storage sales share for Q1 2013 … click on the chart for larger version.

We see sudden upturns in the lines for Dell and NetApp, a decline for HP that accelerated in the latest quarter, and a decline for IBM overall. EMC is top o' the heap again as it jostles with the "Others" category. There is a four-quarter seasonality pattern in IBM's numbers once again so we'll need to see the trend over the next few months before judging that Dell has overtaken IBM and that NetApp is going to follow suit. ®